Every October, for some reason, even as we lunge for the end of the year like a marathon runner approaching the tape, we find ourselves overcome with the urge to increase our output, expand our platforms, and grow our company. Last year, for instance, we decided the time had come to move to a monthly from a bimonthly publishing schedule.
This year is no different. Thus, as careful observers of the CEE Legal Matters website know, we have announced that we will be introducing three new events to our annual calendar: The CEELM Deal of the Year Awards, the CEE Legal Matters Annual Banquet, and the Dealer’s Choice conference.
The Time is Right to Do it Right
We have long resisted suggestions that we generate and promote annual awards, preferring instead to wait until we had reached sufficient market penetration and established a strong enough reputation to allow us to implement a methodology based on peer review instead of the subjective (and, frankly, often commercially-influenced) criteria employed by other publications.
That time has come. Thus, 2018 will see the introduction of the first ever CEELM Deal of the Year Awards, based on a unique selection process that we believe makes them particularly fair and valuable. First, every law firm in Central and Eastern Europe has already received an invitation to submit deals for Deal of the Year consideration, along with an application form to use in making those submissions, as part of the annual Call for Submissions from CEE Legal Matters related to our annual Table of Deals. The deadline for Deal of the Year submissions is January 4, 2018.
The responses which satisfy the mandatory submission criteria will then be forwarded to our Shortlist Panels: Senior partners at leading firms in each CEE jurisdiction who have already agreed to carefully review the submissions and rank them for complexity, size, and market significance. Their review will result in a shortlist of three deals for each market.
That shortlist of final nominees – which will be announced in mid-February – will be forwarded to our Final Selection Committee, which consists of CEE Legal Matters Knowledge Partners and attendees to our annual End of Year Expert Summit, who will then independently rank the final nominees, allowing us to identify the ultimate winner in each market. Critically, members of that Final Selection Committee will not be allowed to vote on deals their own firms worked on.
The Award Winners will be announced at the CEE Legal Matters Annual Banquet and the next day on the CEE Legal Matters website.
A Full Day Before the Full Night
On the same day as the Annual Banquet, CEE Legal Matters will host a new and exciting one-day conference and networking event for leading private practitioners from across Central and Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. This event, which we are calling Dealer’s Choice, will focus on deal-making, with topics ranging from law firm business development efforts to client management skills, from negotiation strategies and best practices to multi-jurisdictional and cross-border considerations, from cross-selling strategies to post-deal follow ups.
Speakers and panelists will be drawn from those firms included on the Deal of the Year Shortlist – who are, by definition, experts in how to get and keep clients, obtain valuable mandates, and finalize complex and important transactions.
Significantly, leading international firms from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States, and China will be invited to attend, allowing the event to function as an unprecedented international networking and referral opportunity.
Both the Dealer’s Choice event and the CEE Legal Matters Awards Banquet will take place for the very first time, on May 29, 2018 in Prague.
All that … and I didn’t even mention that CEE Legal Matters will be hosting not one-country specific GC Summit conference as we did this year, not two, but three, with new events in Serbia and Turkey in addition to the second annual Hungary GC Summit, and of course our annual End of Year Expert Summit, and the bigger-than-ever GC Summit itself in Prague which is expected to host up to 300 senior in-house counsel, and the special China issue of this magazine, and ….
And … I’m a little scared to imagine what Radu and I will decide to do next year.
